Nice to see that the Dems recognize that America is still a theocracy.

Also: Nice of them to follow Romney's directives. That way, the Republicans don't even have to go to the trouble of winning the election...just tell the Dems what to do. Just like they've been doing since Jan. 2009.

Also: Yeah, Jerusalem. Keep the AIPAC money flowing in...to hell with peace in the Middle East, to hell with the interests of the USA.

Somehow, I'm less than surprised at how much you read into this, flapdoodle. Anything so that you can keep harping on how liberals/progressives/moderates shouldn't vote at all in this election and let the Republican Party win so they can do what they want for 2-4 years, and how the Democrats are just going to give the Republicans everything they want.

Yes, I am quite annoyed with your attitude. I detest the direction the Republican Party has gone in, I detest the fact that they're doing everything they can to get back in power, and I detest how they're pulling this country further and further to the right, but I detest stay-at-home 'liberals' who want the Republicans to win so they can say "I told you so" even more. And that's how you're coming across.

If you weren't paying attention, the Republicans were in power - both houses of Congress and the Presidency - for four years, from the beginning of 2003 to the end of 2007. Yet you didn't see this great liberal revolution that you're saying will happen if we have 2-4 more years of Republican rule in government. So what makes you think that it'll somehow happen now when it didn't happen then?

2. I've never said a person shouldn't vote. I have said that I won't vote for Obama. In fact, I am voting for Jill Stein. I know she won't win. But I am not going to cast my vote for a murderous butcher like Obama, even if he is slightly less murderous than Romney.

I think the causes of liberalism, peace, and working Americans have suffered more from the Obama years than the Bush years. That is because, as a fake liberal, Obama has confused and divided the various progressive factions. Under Obama, we have liberals justifying and rationalizing the torture of Bradley Manning, Drone Strikes, Wealth Transfer to the Rich, war in Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, and now Africa. In the Bush years, liberals opposed such things.

Do I think a Romney presidency will stink? Hell yes. How do I know? Because we have had a Romney presidency since Jan. 2009.

3. The real politics is the street. Voting in our psuedo-democracy means very little. In this election, voting Democrat means you are signalling your approval for drone wars, assassination, banksters, and insurance companies exploiting you. Not to mention 25% unemployment. You want to do that, fine. Count me out.

It's not a false dilemma; you should know better than to even try throwing that accusation at me. There are a number of states - I don't know the number, but even one is too many - where unless a party gets a sufficient number of signatures on a petition, they cannot appear on the ballot and voters cannot write them in.

And related to that, tell me honestly, what are the chances of this Jill Stein - or any third-party candidate - winning a single state, or even getting a noticeable percentage of the popular vote? The last election where a third party managed to win a significant portion of the popular vote was 1992, and even then it didn't win any electoral votes at all. And it got less than half that percentage in the following election.

Until a third party - any third party - has a feasible chance to win, presidential elections in the United States are a true dichotomy, not a false one.

You can that the Obama presidency has been worse than the Bush presidency, that it's confused liberals, or whatever else you want to say, but your opinion needs to be backed up by verifiable facts in order to be convincing. That isn't the case, to put it mildly, for all that you throw out a few sound bites here and there to try to back up your assertion. If you really wanted to try to convince people, you'd do a side-by-side comparison of the events and policies enacted by each administration and be able to truly show exactly why you say Obama is worse. You have yet to do that, and that's the only way you have any chance of convincing people that you have the right of it.

By the way, Obama is not a 'fake' liberal. He was never a liberal at all, in the sense you mean the term, and I don't think he ever claimed to be a liberal to begin with. So unless you can show that he portrayed himself as a liberal, claiming that he's a fake one is a deceptive distortion at best and a lie at worst.

What you haven't realized is that when a president is in power, members of his party tend to split into factions. That's the real reason for the split in opinions under Obama. It was the same for Republicans under Bush, the same for Democrats under Clinton, and so on.

Also, I call bull on your "Romney presidency" statement. This is not just hyperbole, it's wildly exaggerated hyperbole. Even considering Obama is not a liberal and never has been, to say that you already know what a Romney presidency would be like is patently ridiculous. I can't say for sure what Romney will be like as president, but I think it's reasonably safe to say that he'll make Obama look liberal by comparison if he gets elected.

Your last paragraph is just more of the same stuff you've been dishing out along. It's little more than "if you don't agree with me, you're in favor of all these things that I'm attributing to Obama". It's the kind of nonsensical claptrap that I've unfortunately come to expect from you. I get more than enough of that sort of garbage from Republicans who are perfectly willing to attribute everything they can get away with to Obama so they can get their candidate elected.

You might want to think about that.

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Nullus In Verba, aka "Take nobody's word for it!" If you can't show it, then you don't know it.

You can that the Obama presidency has been worse than the Bush presidency, that it's confused liberals, or whatever else you want to say, but your opinion needs to be backed up by verifiable facts in order to be convincing. That isn't the case, to put it mildly, for all that you throw out a few sound bites here and there to try to back up your assertion. If you really wanted to try to convince people, you'd do a side-by-side comparison of the events and policies enacted by each administration and be able to truly show exactly why you say Obama is worse.

They say they give us a choice between one completely horrible thing and a slightly less horrible thing. Yet that is not really a choice. That's called having a gun to your head.

And still we have the unadvertised choices of voting 3rd party, of writing in, and of outright resistance.

Voting for either Dems or Repubs is to endorse this corrupt and destructive system.

I've seen it in my friends...the act of rationalizing a vote for a shitty candidate like Obama, of holding one's nose and voting, creates a kind of loyalty in people's minds.

Obama gave my loyalty a face-fart when he bombed Libya. He gave my loyalty a wedgie when he held Bradley Manning in prison for whistle blowing. He insulted my loyalty's mamma when he executed US citizens without trial.

Haven't you noticed that for 30 years straight the plutomilitocracy has been controlling the agenda of both parties?

Haven't you noticed that all the Democrats ever do is put up a platform just 1/16th of an inch to the left of Republicans and loyal liberals hold their nose and vote every time?

Do you think it's a coincidence that the Democrats have put in the religious pandering into their convention? That they are sucking up to AIPAC, the greatest single enemy of peace in the Mid East on planet earth right now?

Do you think it's a coincidence that Obamacare was originally created by the Heritage Foundation?

Have your read Noam Chomsky's 'Manufacturing Consent'?

Have you read Sheldon Wolin, Chris Hedges, Ted Rall or George Orwell?

Your tone is bullying and condescending. I think you are trying to intimidate me.

Which suits the Democratic party as it has become. A party of summary executions, extraordinary rendition, torture, drone bombing, imperialist war and suppression of dissidents.

To quote Micheal Palin: 'Come see the violence inherent in the system!'

I'll look it over. However, I will be very, very annoyed if this ends up being like that "theobamafile" website that a right-wing birther nut linked me.

Quote from: flapdoodle64

And it is indeed a False Dilemma.

A False Dilemma that has been constructed by a Duopoly system.

They say they give us a choice between one completely horrible thing and a slightly less horrible thing. Yet that is not really a choice. That's called having a gun to your head.

This is part of the reason I am criticizing you so harshly. You have this belief that the American political system is built around a false dilemma so that voters can only pick one of two bad choices, and I completely disagree with it. Your belief ignores the political reality that's existed, with occasional exceptions, for over two hundred years. For the vast majority of that time, there have only been two significant political parties, and not because of efforts to keep it that way. The real reason is very simple; because the American political system developed around two major parties, it has the inertia of having been a two-party system for all that time behind it.

Quote from: flapdoodle64

And still we have the unadvertised choices of voting 3rd party, of writing in, and of outright resistance.

Voting for either Dems or Repubs is to endorse this corrupt and destructive system.

You criticize me for "bullying" and "intimidation", yet you have no problems leveling this kind of disgusting insinuation at people who disagree with you. Perhaps you should examine your own behavior instead of just focusing on mine.

Quote from: flapdoodle64

I've seen it in my friends...the act of rationalizing a vote for a shitty candidate like Obama, of holding one's nose and voting, creates a kind of loyalty in people's minds.

Why don't you just come out and say that you think people who support the system are victims of Stockholm Syndrome? Because that is what you're saying. And no, I don't agree. There is a tendency of people to support the option that they feel more comfortable with, but that doesn't inspire "loyalty".

Quote from: flapdoodle64

Obama gave my loyalty a face-fart when he bombed Libya. He gave my loyalty a wedgie when he held Bradley Manning in prison for whistle blowing. He insulted my loyalty's mamma when he executed US citizens without trial.

The bombing of Libya is an extension of the actions of previous presidents. I don't agree with it; the president should not have the authority to order military actions in another country without the advice and consent of Congress, whether or not it's officially a "war".

Regarding Bradley Manning, he took information that he'd been trusted with, that he swore to not give out, and then broke that trust, and furthermore, handed that information out to a foreign NGO. I find it Orwellian for you to call his actions "whistleblowing"; they are arguably treason in my opinion.

I don't agree with the rationale used to justify drone killings of American citizens. However, the solution to that is to bring it before the Supreme Court so that it can decide on whether such that rationale is valid.

Quote from: flapdoodle64

Haven't you noticed that for 30 years straight the plutomilitocracy has been controlling the agenda of both parties?

Prove it.

Quote from: flapdoodle64

Haven't you noticed that all the Democrats ever do is put up a platform just 1/16th of an inch to the left of Republicans and loyal liberals hold their nose and vote every time?

Prove it.

Quote from: flapdoodle64

Do you think it's a coincidence that the Democrats have put in the religious pandering into their convention? That they are sucking up to AIPAC, the greatest single enemy of peace in the Mid East on planet earth right now?

I think it has nothing at all to do with that. This seems more to me that you're letting your legitimate gripes run away with your reason.

Quote from: flapdoodle64

Do you think it's a coincidence that Obamacare was originally created by the Heritage Foundation?

I think it has nothing at all to do with that. The simple fact is that both parties have moved to the right since the Heritage Foundation originally proposed the idea. You seem to be ignoring that; indeed, you're starting to come across like the advocate of a conspiracy theory.

Quote from: flapdoodle64

Have your read Noam Chomsky's 'Manufacturing Consent'?

Have you read Sheldon Wolin, Chris Hedges, Ted Rall or George Orwell?

I've read Animal Farm and 1984. The dystopias depicted in those books are nothing at all like the situation that abides in the USA. I can't speak for the others, since I'd never heard of the authors.

Quote from: flapdoodle64

Your tone is bullying and condescending. I think you are trying to intimidate me.

My tone is caustic and aggressive, because I do not think much of your opinion and the general lack of support you've consistently given it. You seem to be content to gripe and complain about things, and when other people criticize you, you piously point to the fact that you're voting for some third-party candidate so you can claim that you're not part of the problem. Never mind that your use of hyperbole and browbeating people for still being willing to trust the system undercuts any claim you might make

Quote from: flapdoodle64

Which suits the Democratic party as it has become. A party of summary executions, extraordinary rendition, torture, drone bombing, imperialist war and suppression of dissidents.

More of that excessively exaggerated hyperbole. I'm not interested in hyperbole. I want facts. You're making the claims, so you have to provide the facts to support them. That doesn't mean throwing about all these accusations and exaggerations and when someone asks you to support them, you just throw them a link to a website or obscure references to books and expect them to do all the work.

Quote from: flapdoodle64

To quote Micheal Palin: 'Come see the violence inherent in the system!'

Who is a Republican, not a Democrat.

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Nullus In Verba, aka "Take nobody's word for it!" If you can't show it, then you don't know it.

First of all, thank you for sharing that list. It is interesting. But it is quite flawed. I might go so far as to call the list itself propaganda. It is repetitive. And it contains quite a few misrepresentations of reality.

There is a lot of stuff on that list that horrifies me. I’ll never forgive Obama for the drone strikes and the damage that they caused, just as I will never forgive Clinton for sending the Haitians back to Haiti to die. There has never been a president who has acted with the respect for human life that I hold dear.

And what Obama has been doing with drones in Yemen is as bad, and maybe even worse, than what Clinton was doing with drones in Iraq during his second term.

But as I look at this list, there is a lot of stuff on that list that is just not accurate. Supporting child soldiers? Bullshit. Obama stopped the purchase by US corporations of coltran from the countries surrounding the Democratic Republic of the Congo because child soldiers were among the casualties of a war that spanned national borders in an attempt to control this resource that everyone needs inside of our cell phones. That is, in my opinion, one of his major accomplishments. And one that no one is talking about.

Obama sent soldiers to Guatemala? Every president sends troops to Guatemala. In 2007 Bush sent a bunch of soldiers to “build bridges” just in time for the Guatemalan elections. I was in lockdown in the Guatemala City Marriott in the period immediately preceding and following the elections, and I remember being really surprised to meet one of those white, pot-bellied guys with a Texan accent, who reminded me of the CIA operatives I met in the region during the 1980’s. Over drinks one night he started out claiming to be a retired English teacher in Guatemala for a conference? Odd time and place for a conference. As we drank more and shared stories, he had lots of stories about his decades in and out of Central America. He had been in all the right places at the right times. Conferences my ass.

So people got spied on during the Obama administration. In the US. Over the internet. In foreign countries. Yeah. More spying than during the Reagan years? More “secret wars” than during previous administrations? I’d love to see a side by side comparison.

Bases in Chile and Colombia? Bases are more honest than the covert operations that the US has been running in those countries for years. The coup in Chile took place on someone else’s watch, as you might remember. And more recently the Bush-sponored coup in Haiti. And the Bush-sponsored failed coup in Venezuela.

And quite frankly, I’ve been very impressed with the Obama administration’s relationships with Lula in Brazil and Evo Morales in Bolivia. Under other administrations, those leaders might have mysteriously driven off of bridges or been undermined by some Lieutenant who happened to graduate from the School of the Americas. But the Obama administration has been playing pretty nicely with the new emerging powerhouse in the Americas, and with the tiny country who controls metals and natural gas that our US corporations are not getting to exploit anymore.

I see no flaws in the Chomsky article on the “Arab Spring.” Of course the administration had valid concerns about “budding democracy” in the region. Anyone who was paying attention had concerns. And I have read Manufacturing Consent.

The NYPD Muslim surveillance? I live in a neighborhood that was targeted by that initiative, and it REALLY pisses me off. But it was part of a larger anti-terrorist package that was poorly administered by LOCAL officials. Are you really asking him to be responsible for micromanaging every federally funded imitative that has local oversight?

Overuse of executive powers? Well he couldn’t get anything done legislatively. So he changed regulations enabling undocumented kids graduating from US high schools to apply for temporary work permits and enabling them to go to college. He closed down family detention centers. He changed some regulations which will enable spouses of US citizens who are out of legal status to adjust their status within the US and avoid the 10 year ban that was legislated a decade and a half ago, helping families to stay together.

I could look at this list and go on and on.

I’m not looking at the work of the Obama administration with starry eyed innocence. I feel like I’ve been paying attention. I pay attention to every administration.

I will be voting for Obama again in less than two months. With less enthusiasm than the first time I voted for him.

Dems get money from corporations, war profiteers, plutocrats and theocrats when they act like Republicans.

The money is what they use for election campaiging, particularly TV, which is hellaciously expensive.

Money is the reason they sell out.

And after they get elected, money keeps them selling out.

I really think that US politics has degenerated to the point that it's simply legalized bribery, thinly disguised with either liberal or jingoist rhetoric, depending on your persuasion.

You know, I agree with you. I really do.

But that is the reason that Obama's actions prohibiting the purchase of coltran are so huge. That is why his defiance of the for-profit prison industry is so huge. That is why his relationship with Bolivia after the nationalization of their natural resources is so huge.

He has pissed off some corporations. He has chipped away at some corporate profits in the name of social justice. And you know what? The consumers have not really felt the impact of these policies.

I'm very disappointed with his energy policies. But the energy lobby is huge and powerful, and just as Hillary Clinton could not get past the health insurance lobby, Obama seems stuck on energy. I don't know why he has had the power to defy some industries, but not others.

Would I rather have an Evo Morales instead of a Barack Obama in terms of response to corporate interests? Yeah. But this country is too big to change that fast. There are too many systems in place, too many structures designed to serve the special interests. And the checks and balances that looks so good in theory, that work against rapid change.

Obama inherited a mess. Wars. Economic disaster. Real terror threats. A defiant, republican legislature. And an infrastructure maintained by special interests determined to undermine any changes he wanted to implement.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not thinking that them having made this change in response to Romney's criticism was a good idea, leaving aside whether it would have been a good idea to do it at all.

What I'm upset about, what I'm criticizing, is flapdoodle's tendency to see something like this as 'proof' that the "plutomilitocracy" is in control, that the parties are nothing but carbon copies of each other, that Obama was Romney 1.0, etc. I am not criticizing the fact that he's voting for a third-party candidate, or that he thinks more people should vote for third-party candidates. I'm not really criticizing his distaste with the Democratic Party, either. It sounds a lot like how I started to feel about the Republican Party in 1998 or thereabouts.

But that's exactly the point. I was a Republican for a while, a moderate conservative during the Clinton years (though, admittedly, I was only 14 during the 1992 election). I saw how the Republican party worked from the inside, and now I'm seeing how the Democratic party works from the inside. I really doubt flapdoodle has done that. That's why I think he doesn't really have any basis for saying that there's no difference between the two parties.

That the Democrats have moved to the right as the Republicans went off the deep end, I have no doubt. But that doesn't make the Democrats into Republican clones.

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Nullus In Verba, aka "Take nobody's word for it!" If you can't show it, then you don't know it.

By the way, my dad was a lifelong Republican up until around 1998 as well. That, I think, is the reason the Democrats have shifted to the right - not some "plutomilito-whatever" conspiracy to dominate the country from the shadows by controlling both parties, but for the simple reason that lots of liberal and moderate Republicans jumped ship when the fundamentalists started dictating the direction that the party went in. Those people either went independent and voted Democratic, or registered as Democrats. Thus, the Democrats shifted right in position, which is why you can have a health care plan originally devised by a conservative think-tank be put into effect by a Democratic president.

What liberals and progressives need to do is form a new party themselves. Leave the Democrats and Republicans to fight it out over who properly represents the conservatives in this country, and do something to pull the liberals back to the left. I'm not a liberal, but I completely understand the need for there to be a counterweight with both existing parties moving to the right.

But flapdoodle's rhetoric isn't the way to go about doing it. Neither is voting for an existing third-party candidate, hoping that enough people do the same (or stay home) so that Romney wins and turns this country into a train wreck. The Republicans were a new party once themselves, you know, and they did exactly the same thing that I'm advocating here - pulled members of the Whigs and other minor parties to them like metal filings to a magnet, while the Democrats (conservatives) of the time split. Well, the conservatives are already split between the Democrats and Republicans.

Logged

Nullus In Verba, aka "Take nobody's word for it!" If you can't show it, then you don't know it.

Not even going to answer with your own words, flapdoodle? Just a silly political comic that doesn't even come close to describing the actual political situation in the USA, and goes off the deep end by comparing Democrats to the KKK and Republicans to Nazis.

You didn't even respond to my statement that liberals need to make a party to counterbalance the rightward swing of the major parties. Just more of this "both parties are evil and I'm not having anything of it" stuff that you've been spouting all along, and more of this pie-in-the-sky "if Republicans ruin this country enough, liberals will take it back" dreaming.

We live in the real world. That means if you don't like the way things are going, you have to be willing to work to change them. It takes more than just voting for a third-party candidate - or not voting in the first place. So, what are you intending to do besides talk, flapdoodle?

The parties have included a recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital as part of their platform for a while now. It was in the Democratic platform in 2008. For all intents and purposes, it is Israel's capital. That's where the Knesset is. That's where the prime minister lives. However, US administrations have treated and will continue to treat Tel Aviv as Israel's capital. That's where our embassy is. That's where the embassies of most countries are. Neither the respective party platforms nor the realities of Israel's day to day governance are going to change any of that until some sort of resolution of the Palestinian conflict is made. And that's not something that's likely to change no matter who wins the election or what's in the platform. So there's that. If this is a pander or a capitulation to a lobby group or whatever, and it is, then it's not one with any real consequence to it and it's not one that's unique to Democrats or out of line with previous platforms. I have a hard time getting my knickers in a twist over this. Even less so with the god language.

Anyway, more broadly speaking, flap, I'd laugh your position off as silly and uninformed if it weren't so widely held. You know a lot about the more sinister aspects of our national security policy and of our foreign policy, about the mischief and evil we make abroad and about the liberties we disrespect at home. But what you don't seem to know much about is politics in general and domestic politics specifically. Indeed, in constructing this narrative of Obama as Republican, you must cast aside a wide variety of issues on which the parties strongly disagree, issues with real consequences for real people, issues that the parties have demonstrated a willingness to act on. You ignore social issues like reproductive rights, gay rights, and the enforcement of existing civil rights laws like the Voting Rights Act. You ignore the parties'' differing views on social security privatization, tax rates, and Medicare and Medicaid spending. You ignore the fact that while, yes, the Affordable Care Act was based on Republican ideas, these ideas are ideas that the Republican party has since abandoned en masse. And you ignore the fact that the Republicans, who have promised to repeal the law, would do enormous damage to the health and well being of millions of Americans by following through on that. Whatever Romney was as governor of Massachusetts. Whatever the Republican party was like in the mid 90s, what we're dealing with today is something different. There is no longer a moderate or liberal wing of the Republican party. Your failure to recognize these sorts of things or your ignorance of them makes misinformed nonsense of any points you attempt to make.

Look, I don't have a problem with you claiming that some of Obama policies are abhorrent, that they continue and sometimes even exacerbate some of the excesses of previous administrations. I don't have a problem with you claiming that the Obama administration's attempts to reign in the banks or deal with the fallout from the financial crisis have been, in many ways, woefully inadequate. I don't think I have a problem with you voting for a third party candidate or with refusing to vote for Obama because of this. But I do have a problem with you pretending that this is something that will have a positive effect on our politics and our policy or that it is pragmatic in any way, shape or form. The fact of the matter is that we have a winner take all system and therefore a system that is effectively a two party system. So in November, you can vote for whoever you want when you cast your ballot. You can stay home, if you so choose. But in January, it will be either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama being sworn in. Therefore, as a practical matter, your choice is between a Republican administration and a Democratic one. If you want to characterize this as a choice between evil and slightly less evil then fine. So be it. That's the choice in front of you.

You can kvetch about Obama or you can live in the real world and realize that voting in a national election for a viable candidate means voting for someone whose views aren't always going to match up with yours.